Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for managing an object extracted from image data.
Description of the Related Art
As digital still cameras (hereinafter, also referred to as DSCs) and multifunctional mobile phones having a camera function become widespread, the number of digital pictures captured by a user is increasing dramatically. Such data is usually stored in a personal computer (PC) the user owns and/or by using storage services provided on the Internet. As the number of stored pictures increases, there arises a problem that a lot of image viewing operations are needed to find out where desired images are stored. In view of such a problem, a method for detecting faces of persons from a large amount of image data stored by a user, performing a face feature amount analysis on face areas, and automatically grouping the faces of persons who are considered to be the same persons has been discussed (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (Translation of PCT Application) No. 2011-516966)).
In the case of automatically grouping the faces of persons considered to be the same persons like Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (Translation of PCT Application) No. 2011-516966, a challenge has been to improve the accuracy of grouping, or equivalently, the accuracy of individual recognition.
The foregoing Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (Translation of PCT Application) No. 2011-516966 discusses providing a unit that displays a warning mark on face information considered likely to have caused misrecognition in a displayed person group, and from which the user inputs whether to accept or reject the face. If the user rejects the face, the face information is hidden from a user interface (UI). However, if new face information similar to the face information considered likely to have caused misrecognition is input during grouping processing, a warning mark appears again.